A mammalian clock protein responds directly to light

July 1, 2008

We all know that light effects the growth and development of plants, but what effect does light have on humans and animals? A new paper by Nathalie Hoang et al., published in PLoS Biology this week, explores this question by examining cryptochromes in flies, mice, and humans. In plants, cryptochromes are photoreceptor proteins which absorb and process blue light for functions such as growth, seedling development, and leaf and stem expansion.

Cryptochromes are present in humans and animals as well and have been proven to regulate the mechanisms of the circadian clock. But how they work in humans and animals is still somewhat of a mystery.

When plants are exposed to blue light, they experience a reduction in flavin pigments. This reduction activates the cryptochromes and thus allows for growth and seedling development. Hoang et al. sought to study the effect of blue light on fly, animal, and human cryptochromes by exposing them to blue light and measuring the change in the number of oxidized flavins. After a prolonged exposure to blue light, the authors found that the number of flavins did in fact decrease, as they do in plants.

While this research reveals a similarity in the responses of flies, mice, humans, and plants to blue light, the decrease in flavins affects circadian rhythms differently. The mouse cryptochromes, Mcry1 and Mcry2, interact with key parts of the circadian clock: mice with these cryptochromes missing exhibited a complete loss in circadian rhythm behaviors such as wheel-running. However, this change in behavior was independent of light exposure.

Although this paper by Hoang, et al, shows that cryptochromes in animals and humans do respond to light in a similar fashion to those in plants, the question as to how exactly light effects them is still open for further research. Although cryptochromes are mainly found in the retina of the eye, they are also present in many different tissues of the body that are close to the surface. This suggests that cryptochromes may have non-visual functions, and may also affect protein levels and behavior.

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

Related Stories

Studies of mutant fruit flies reveal how both photoreceptors and the visual system influence circadian clock neurons in response to changing light-dark cycles. The results are reported in the Journal of Neuroscience give ...

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have succeeded in developing a new microscope capable of observing the magnetic sensitivity of photochemical reactions believed to be responsible for the ability of some animals to navigate ...

Each year, the Arctic Tern travels over 40,000 miles, migrating nearly from pole to pole and back again. Other birds make similar (though shorter) journeys in search of warmer climes. How do these birds manage to traverse ...

A study funded by the National Institutes of Health is unraveling the mystery of how blue light from residential and commercial lighting, electronic devices and outdoor lights can throw off-kilter the natural body clock of ...

Each fall millions of monarch butterflies use a sophisticated navigation system to transverse 2,000 miles from breeding sites across the eastern United States to an overwintering habitat in specific groves of fir trees in ...

Recommended for you

Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters. But they have never been able to get a sheet of nanoparticles to curve or fold ...

Traditional computers manipulate electrons to turn our keystrokes and Google searches into meaningful actions. But as components of the computer processor shrink to only a few atoms across, those same electrons become unpredictable ...

Professor Hyun-Gyu Park of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed a technique to analyze various target DNAs using an aptamer, a ...

Serendipity has as much a place in science as in love. That's what Northeastern physicists Swastik Kar and Srinivas Sridhar found during their four-year project to modify graphene, a stronger-than-steel infinitesimally thin ...

As an National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded entomologist, Virginia Tech's Paul Marek has to spend much of his time in the field, hunting for rare and scientifically significant species. He's provided NSF with an inside ...

Graphene has been called a wonder material, capable of performing great and unusual material acrobatics. Boron nitride nanotubes are no slackers in the materials realm either, and can be engineered for physical and biological ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.